Going to hell today, as if..
Many of us are taught that hell is bad. We should avoid it at all costs. Only unimaginable torture goes on there. Some folks tell their children this. You’re assholes, if you do, BTW. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. But it does mean I’m not lying and going to hell because I can’t call you an asshole when you’re being one.
But I don’t really believe in hell. I do enjoy the thought experiment immensely. If I was terrified a sin would put me in hell for eternity, how willing would I be to admit that sin? Even to myself?
If you’re religious do you know this?
For those of you that don’t know in your religious circles if any read this, a major stinker about religion for us atheists and even agnostics are the conflicts internally and struggles to make sense of religion. Hell, sin, and forgiveness are all huge red flags to me now of abuse. Are they actually good or bad, conceptually?
Me as a boy.
The type of person I used to be completely gave up “flying-right” because I’d judged myself hell-worthy and a useless cause. I wasn’t even 17! But my life taught me by then that I was going to hell, nothing I could do. Why even bother?
This is not a frame of mind that is reached overnight, I should mention. This is reinforced with years of bad churches and horrendous abuse. I just didn’t realize then believing in god and also being abused made me hell-worthy. It wasn’t necessarily anything I, myself, was up to. But I felt a lost cause, not worth learning the stuff I know today. I’m willing to bet the “lost cause” sensation is familiar for some folks based on my experiences in psych wards.
I’m on meds now and it’s better.
It turns out plain old medicine helps me learn better and even helps with behavior. Therapy and reading about abuse helps my mind too. At 48 I don’t feel a lost cause. Lost voice maybe.. haha.
What makes me sad and angry.
It makes me sad thinking about how many folks in church were abused and how they carry that with them. I can tell you, it’s heavy when you’re young.. even heavy when you’re old. When I was younger, I felt something was wrong with me.. now that I’m older and feel relatively safe for one of the few times in my life, I just want to hug that boy I was. I know a good “I know, I’m here,” would have helped him some.
The gateway drug.
Hell never did a thing for me. When I was low, I was marching toward it. When I felt Hoity Toity, I was too good for it. Neither state helps anyone here. So I said bye to hell. This was the beginning of the end of religion for me. This is to very realistically say, I got better from here.
Have you ever read about cults?
If you’ve ever read about cults you know they typically have pillars of belief somehow dependent on one another. If one of those pillars fall, they all do. Religion is generally more like a cafeteria for most folks in that they grab what they like and put it on their tray and leave the rest.
But once I could not bring myself to “believe” in hell anymore, all of religion crumbled. The perk is I don’t think about hell at all except for writing my blog. The bad news is all the bullshit.
True Story:
I was told by a Baptist Minister that if the suffering of Christ didn’t motivate me then the suffering in Hell would. I don’t live that way at all. He must have thought I was someone else. I’ll take 0 suffering, please? I don’t need torture and suffering as an aide to assist me in doing right. I am able to not hurt anyone without going through that.
If you need the threat of eternal suffering to be a nice person it’s likely you’re an asshole. Being nice is rad. Wish I could be nice all the time to everyone. In fact, much of my life is centered around being as nice as possible. No hell required. I simply enjoy it. I can’t fathom a nice person doing away with being nice if they learned hell was a hoax. Whether or not you’re nice isn’t hell, it’s you.
Hell is old-school.
Whoever came up with hell back in the mythology days didn’t know shit, really. Any more or less than me now. Hell isn’t for them in their time to proselytize anymore. It’s for me in my time to reject. I reject the notion of hell, have for a while. What does that mean for sin?
It falls like dominoes.
Sin doesn’t exist if hell doesn’t. And now you see the pillars fall like I mentioned in a cult. Heaven, gone. Whole reason for J-Dog, nothing. Even forgiveness, absolutely no point in it. All that is gone from my life today. Started with hell. Hell was my gateway drug to atheism. lol. It just doesn’t make any sense for living on earth, the concept of hell.
…Unless someone wants to control you.
Return to home.🏠
Too Good was a song that Roger Brainard helped us out with. I loved the sound of his Les Paul so much I ended up buying one for myself.
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